1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to waste toner cartridge processing equipment which can recover and recycle various natural resources from waste toner cartridges.
2. Description of the Related Art
The primary material of toner used as ink for electrostatic latent image type printers, copiers, and image transmission devices is powdered pigmented plastic. However, because of being in a “powder” form, the toner easily scatters around the surrounding area during ink-refilling and therefore careful handling is required. For this reason, the toner is ordinarily stored in a container (referred to as a toner cartridge) and distributed to a user. The user replaces this toner cartridge as it is.
A used toner cartridge (waste toner cartridge) is discarded as noncombustible waste without being recycled. Alternatively, only the container (cartridge) is reused. Although the latter is preferable in terms of recycling resources, the number of times the cartridge can be reused is limited, and the cartridge is ultimately discarded as noncombustible waste.
Therefore, a processing technology is required in which, while finely crushing a waste toner cartridge and performing separation and recovery of the toner ingredients, various raw materials constituting the toner cartridge can also be separated and recovered.
As a processing technology such as this, for example, a technology described in Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open (Kokai) Publication No. 2002-79125 is known.
The technology described in this publication will be hereinafter referred to as conventional art. In the abstract of this conventional art, to solve the problem of “providing a used toner cartridge treatment device capable of crushing a toner cartridge under safe and good environmental conditions and subjecting the cartridge to separate treatment for each of the constituent materials of the cartridge, even when the used cartridge, as it is, is charged into the device without performing any handwork and without disassembling the cartridge”, the solution of “a crusher for crushing a used toner cartridge in a closed crushing chamber while maintaining the atmosphere within the crushing chamber in such a state that the oxygen concentration in the atmosphere is lower than the explosion limit, and a separator for separating the crushed material discharged from the crusher into constituent materials of the cartridge” is disclosed. As a result of the solution, “by only charging a used toner cartridge for a copying machine, or the like, as a cartridge integral body as it is, into the device without requiring any pretreatment handwork for bringing the cartridge into an almost disassembled state, constituent materials of the cartridge, such as residual toner, metal (e.g. iron and nonferrous metal), glass and plastic material, are safely and automatically subjected to separate recovery from each other without any risk of causing explosion. Accordingly, the used toner cartridge may be treated with remarkably high efficiency, through very simple, clean and safe treatment work, by using such a simple treatment device, and further, at a low cost as a whole”.
However, the above-described conventional art has the following problems.
(a) A first problem in the conventional art is as follows. According to the description in paragraph [0021] of the publication, the “closed crushing chamber” refers to a shredder 4 configured in an overall airtight (sealed) state. Also, “atmosphere lower than the explosion limit” refers to an atmosphere of nitrogen gas (an oxygen gas concentration of 7% or less is preferable). However, the shredder 4 (crushing chamber) is not constantly sealed. Every time a waste toner cartridge is placed into the shredder 4, the sealed state is broken and nitrogen gas escapes to the outside.
This is also clear from the description in paragraph [0022] of the publication stating that “an opening and closing device 7 including double doors opening outward is provided on the lower end of the bunker 3. Opening and closing of the opening and closing device 7 allow the used toner cartridge 1 to be adjusted to an appropriate amount and stably fed to the shredder 4”. The shredder 4 (crushing chamber) is opened to the external environment by the opening and closing device 7 being “opened”.
Therefore, there is a problem in the conventional art that the shredder 4 is required to be re-filled with nitrogen gas after a waste toner cartridge is loaded into the shredder 4, and the consumption cost of nitrogen gas increases accordingly. In addition, because filling the shredder 4 with nitrogen gas requires time depending on the chamber volume, the crushing operation is required to be interrupted during this period. Therefore, the processing efficiency of the crushing operation is poor.
(b) A second problem in the conventional art is as follows. The crushed materials in the conventional art are obtained by a chain 10 that rotates at high speed (refer to paragraph [0023] of the publication). That is, the crushed materials are merely materials that have been mechanically crushed in an atmosphere lower than the explosion limit. Therefore, there is a problem that the crushed materials are in a contaminated state covered with toner, and even when the crushed materials are “separated into each constituent material of the cartridge by a separator”, these materials, which have been contaminated, cannot be reused as they are.